Seconds Turn to Years
by Sarahbeara333
Summary: John's life used to be a whirl of expeditiously churning shapes and colours, all set to the rapid pace of Sherlock Holmes' eccentricity; the speed of his swiftly progressing mind. He had not dwelled upon time then, because, when he was with Sherlock, time ceased to exist. Warnings: major character death, suicide trigger warnings


**Disclaimer: ALL (both) OF THESE AMAZING CHARACTERS BELONG TO THE FANTASTIC SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, AS WELL AS MOFFTISS.**

**Warning: Major character death, suicide trigger warnings, feels**

**A/N: This is my first or second time writing something with actual feelings (as appose to just porn), so constructive criticism is readily welcomed! I hope you enjoy it! I just really needed to get this down on paper (er… Microsoft Word).**

Tick… tock… tick… tock… John glances at the dull, lead-coloured clock. The seconds trickle into minutes, the minutes into hours, and the hours into days. The weeks shifting amorphously into months, _years_ without his notice; and yet he feels every agonizingly monotonous microsecond passing at such a sluggish pace he is almost astounded to note that, while mere seconds feel eons, three years have felt nothing in the slightest. _Almost_. To be astounded, however, one must be able to exhibit anything close to the nature of interest in the endeavors of his or her state of being.

John's life used to be a whirl of expeditiously churning shapes and colours, all set to the rapid pace of Sherlock Holmes' eccentricity; the speed of his swiftly progressing mind. He had not dwelled upon time then, because, when he was with Sherlock, time ceased to exist. They had lived in a constant state of being; even when they were without a case, life with Sherlock Holmes was so vividly, constantly in motion, and so vibrantly real.

Now, John is trapped, encased in the tedious routine of conventional reality, and he's tired. Tired, not only of this dull continuum that has wickedly sewn its self into his life, but of the stridently pitying gazes that he receives from everyone Sherlock and he used to commune with; and he's overwhelmingly empty, as if there is a vast pit inside of him, slowly but relentlessly feeding off his soul, removing all emotion that may have once resided there, so efficient in its manner that sometimes he can no longer remember what it was like to ever have felt alive.

John runs a caressing hand down the cool, metal shaft of his illegally-kept gun that is sat in his lap, and is comforted by the familiar, smooth tug of the slide that he hadn't known he'd meant to pull until he'd heard the piercing _click_ that seemed to reverberate off the walls and drown him in its cataclysmic quiet. The absence of noise, save the gradual ticking of the wall clock, echoes throughout his mind until it's too much, and John can't take the relentless hush anymore; and he needs to do something to retreat from the constant that has befallen him—needs to obliterate the silence that has pilfered Doctor John H. Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and devoured him entirely.

The ticking of that same clock, utterly inexorable, pounding through his head so loudly that it's almost deafening, and John will do anything, anything at all, to escape that dreadful rhythm exploding through the earsplitting quiet that is infecting his mind like a disease; so John lifts the pistol to his temple, clicking the safety off as he does so with a satisfying clink that brings the whisper of a manic smile to his lips. He lets the muzzle press into the soft of his sandy hair, relishing the quickening of his pulse pounding beneath the icy object, something he hasn't felt for so long that, as the full force of his emotions return to him in this instant, he is brought nearly to tears at how _real_ everything feels and the way that every sensory detail he records is heightened to extremities that he hasn't felt for much too long. His grip tightens and he thinks he can, perhaps, hear someone on the stair whose voice is a great deal too decipherable and too ideal for this moment for it not to be a wild creation of his mind.

Tick… Tock… Tick… Tock…

John squeezes the trigger.


End file.
